Blu-ray recorders have been on the scene for a while now, but now that the format war's over, it looks like more companies are starting to commit to BD-R devices -- like Pioneer, which announced today that it'll have a Blu-ray recorder out in Japan by the end of the year. The company didn't say what model it would be or what price point it was aiming for, but the tech is being jointly developed with Sharp, so hopefully it's have a family resemblance to units like the 1TB AQUOS BD-HDW20 in everything but the $2,611 pricetag.

Fans of high-def audio rejoice: The first Blu-ray recording has been released. Fans of anything other than Divertimento, hold your horses: The first release is from Thondheimsolistene, an orchestra from Norway. "Divertimenti", as it is called, will be released by the 2L label in full HD audio glory along with a SACD track for those not on the Blu-ray bandwagon just yet. Formats include 2.0 LPCM, 5.1 LPCM, 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio, 5.1 Dolby True HD, 5.1 Dolby Digital at 48KHz, and it has been confirmed to work just fine on the PS3.

[Via MiC]

What's this? Best Buy finally released the Insignia NS-BRDVD blu-ray player for an affordable $349.99. The design, like other in-house Insignia-branded products, is questionable, but if you were looking into the PS3 as a player, this could be a $50 cheaper option if games aren't your thing. The unit outputs at 1080P, decodes Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD, and decodes 2-channel Dolby TrueHD. Outputs include stereo audio, composite video, component video, optical Toslink, digital coax, and HDMI. No word on image quality just yet, but based on previous Insignia products, we're not holding our breath.

[Thanks, Jordan]

The popular DVR / DVD combo trend continues with Sharp's new, just-released Aquos players. The three new combo machines -- updates from last fall's models -- pack Blu-Ray playback with DVRs of various sizes ranging from the 250GB BD-HDW22, to the 500GB BD-HDW25, to the 1TB BD-HDW30 big daddy of TV-recording doom. The Blu-Ray section looks pretty standard, but the DVR records in MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 at three different bitrates - 4.8, 8, and 12Mbps. If you're thinking these will record from BD to HDD or the other way around, think again. The movie studios will have none of that.

Sony, you tease! You go and finally put the 80 GB PS3 / Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle up at SonyStyle, complete with a SKU and price point, but you're not taking pre-orders? We just get to look at the thing? Can we touch it? Just for a second? We won't tell. Anyway, as expected, the PS3 / MGS4 bundle will be available in June at $499.99 complete with a DUALSHOCK3 wireless controller. Let's hope that "notify me" button says "add to cart" some time soon.

[Thanks, David]

With HD DVD, things are just going from bad, to really bad, to worse, to car-crash-you-can't-stop-looking-at. You can file this one under that latter category, as Wal-Mart has officially announced its intentions to stop stocking HD DVD players and movies by June. According to reports, the retailer came to the decision after Netflix and Best Buy made announcements concerning their position in the HD format war. Susan Chronister of Wal-Mart wrote on the company's blog, "By June Wal-Mart will only be carrying Blu-ray movies and hardware machines, and of course standard-def movies, DVD players, and up-convert players." Susan went on to deliver what we consider a total burn by adding, "if you bought the HD [DVD] player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kid's playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard-def movies, and make space for a BD player." Look, we're not gonna say that this is it for HD DVD, but... uh, it doesn't look real great.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Finally, Michael Bay has stepped down from Cheese Mountain to pontificate on the finer points of the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray war. Speaking from the inner-sanctum of his lair -- located equidistant from the Church of Scientology and a gigantic cotton candy stand -- Mr. Bay reminds us that, "Blu-ray's better, and I told everyone," then goes on to further prop himself by adding, "I was very vocal about it. I knew HD [DVD] was not going to make it." We're glad that Bay can sleep at night, safe in the knowledge that the mere "quality" of the formats decided the winner of this battle, rather than massive business partnerships fueled by the desire for marketshare. He wrapped up his message (actually given at an awards ceremony held by the Visual Effects Society) by saying, "Am I thrilled? It really wasn't my fight, but remember what I said in the press? I was kind of saying HD [DVD]'s going to lose... No one believed me." He then slammed a trophy he was receiving to the floor, pointed to the packed room, and yelled, "In your face, HD DVD!"

[Via Blu-ray, thanks Kiwi616]

Gateway is releasing two new desktops today, both sporting some features we've grown accustomed to, but also introducing some new hotness into the typically stale market. The new models -- the GM5664 and GT5662 -- share a slew of the same features, like the ATI Radeon HD 2400XT graphics card, 3GB of RAM, and 8-channel 7.1 audio, but they also have some notable differences. The GM5664 comes equipped with a Hybrid-SuperMulti optical drive, which gives you the ability to play Blu-ray or HD DVDs to your heart's content, while also handling typical DVD-RW functions. The system is also packed with a 2.3GHz AMD Phenom 9600 CPU, 1TB hard drive array, and an analog / digital TV tuner. The GT5662 includes a 2.2GHz AMD Phenom 9500 CPU, does away with the dual format drive, halves the storage space, and axes the TV tuner. Both are available now for $1,149.99 and $749.99, respectively.

Philips has announced the second generation in its line of Blu-ray players with the BDP7200, sporting 1080p/24 and Deep Color support, and BonusView (aka Profile 1.1) picture-in-picture capability. The player can also upscale DVDs to 1080p, and control connected devices using the EasyLink HDMI Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) protocols. Philips will release the BDP7200 in April for a $349 price, putting it towards the low end on the Blu-ray player price list, but the one thing we wish Philips had let us know was the level of audio codec support, with no mention at all of DTS or Dolby's high-end audio formats.

[Update: Also see our hands-on with the BDP7200.]

Click on for a couple more photos

Another day, another format war rumor. Business Week has a lengthy writeup on the possibility of lone dual-format holdout Warner Brothers switching to Blu-ray exclusively, and how it could affect the outcome of the long-running feud between high-definition disc formats HD DVD and Blu-ray. The rumor gets its seed from vice-chairman of Lionsgate Michael Burns, who claims that Warner will be turning blue soon. With Warner on their side, the Blu-ray studios would hold a 70% market share for the DVD market. Of course, if Warner shifts red, then the studio market will again be split into two equal halves, and consumers are left to wait and see if one format can outsell, outspend, or outlast the other until only one format remains. The stakes are so high that top execs from both camps are banging down Warner's door with personal meetings -- and possibly even truckloads of cash -- to get Warner to turn to their side. One thing you can be sure of is that Warner is going to be keeping an extra close eye on the dual-format release of Harry Potter next week for guidance.

[Thanks, Michael P.]

Sony is said to have yet another PlayStation 3 firmware update ready for download before Christmas, with the gift for movie-loving gamers being Profile 1.1 compatibility for Blu-ray Discs. Competing format HD DVD has had support for Profile 1.1 features such as picture-in-picture, secondary audio, and local storage since its inception, while in the Blu-ray spec they were optional. There aren't any Profile 1.1 Blu-ray titles on the market yet, and only a single 1.1-compatible player for sale from Panasonic, so this is really about having one more bullet point on a box for fanboys to argue about. The only major HD DVD feature that becomes required in Profile 2.0 is Internet connectivity, so downloadable content will still be optional for some 1.1-compatible BD players -- but not the PS3 with its built-in Ethernet jack. Considering the PS3 is still one of the cheapest and most widely-owned Blu-ray players, and Sony continues to improve its capabilities via firmware updates, PS3 fans and Blu-ray Disc aficionados have that much more ammo to use in the never-ending format war.

[Thanks, ag23]

All the action in the next-gen format war might be at the front lines of cut-rate players, but the battle rages on across the entire spectrum of devices -- which is why we've seen the poor $199 DH-401S BD-ROM drive from Philips and Lite-on touted as the answer to those $200 HD-A2s in a couple places. That's quite a stretch, obviously, but it's still much cheaper than any other BD-ROM drives we've seen. The read-only SATA drive pulls data off BD media at 4X, single layer DVDs at 12X, DVD-DL and DVD±RW at 8x, and CDs at 32X. Giving up write capabilites is obviously limiting, but for those of you building out HTPCs, this bad boy might be just the ticket.

[Thanks, AG23]

Denon cares about you, movie-buff, and you need only look at the company's two latest Blu-ray player offerings to realize that. Enter the DVD-3800BD and DVD-2500BT, the former supports 1080p, 12-bit DAC at 297MHz, the exciting acronyms of D.D.S.C-HD (or Dynamic Discrete Surround Circuit-HD), and D.P.I.C. (Denon Pixel Image Correction), plus HDMI, RCA / BNC, and RS-232C connectivity. The latter is a slightly more stripped-down version which axes some of the capital-letter feature flourishes. Both players will be available in Japan in January of 2008, priced at ¥336,000 for the DVD-3800BD, and ¥231,000 for the DVD-2500BT.

[Via Akihabara News]

The story's in the search results with this one -- after continually delaying its Total HD hybrid Blu-ray / HD DVD discs, Warner president Ron Sanders told TWICE that the format is "on hold for now," because the company fears being the only publisher of such discs could "be hard to make it go." Furthermore, while the studio is still planning on putting out both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, but its talking to both sides about exclusives and "it's kind of crazy right now." Indeed. Too bad all that craziness is terrible for the consumer, eh, Ron?

[Via Hi-Def Digest]